SPOILER WARNING: Pilot
RATING: G
CONTENT WARNING: None
CLASSIFICATION: V
SUMMARY: Every time a choice is made, an alternative is discarded.
The Road not Taken
By Brandon D. Ray (publius@avalon.net)
Special Agent Dana Scully walked purposefully down the corridors ofthe J. Edgar Hoover Building, her heels clicking metronomically on thelinoleum floor.
For the dozenth time since receiving the phone call yesterday afternoon,she wondered what this was all about. Section Chief Blevins had saidonly that it concerned a possible new assignment, which didn't make anysense at all, since her teaching fellowship at Quantico still had anotheryear to run. A slight apprehension in the back of her mind causedher to wonder if Blevins was dissatisfied with her work, but she had enoughconfidence in her own abilities that she didn't take that possibility veryseriously.
She arrived at Blevins' office and rapped lightly on the door. His voice called out for her to enter, and she pushed the door open andstepped inside.
She found herself facing not just Blevins, but two other men as well,neither of whom she had ever met before. One, seated next to theSection Chief's desk, was silver-haired and wore wire-rimmed glasses. The other leaned casually against a filing cabinet next to a bookcase,smoking a cigarette. As she she walked over to stand in front ofBlevins' desk, the man with the cigarette gazed at her appraisingly, andshe felt an unexplained chill race down her spine.
She expected the Section Chief to introduce the two other men, but hedid not. "Agent Scully," he said. "Thank you for coming onsuch short notice." He gestured at a chair, and waited while shesat down, then continued. "We see you've been with us for just overtwo years.
"Yes, sir." Where was this interview going? The facts ofher educational and professional background were readily available in herpersonnel file -- which Blevins quite evidently had sitting on his deskin front of him -- but he nevertheless seemed to want to go over it withher.
Blevins continued, "You went to medical school, but you chose not topractice. How'd you come to work for the FBI?"
Well, that one was easy enough. "Well, sir, I was recruited outof medical school My parents still think it was an act of rebellion,but I saw the FBI as a place where I could distinguish myself."
That was a bit of an understatement; in fact, her entire family hadargued with her for months about this decision. Her brother Billhad been the worst, and only Charlie had seemed to really understand. "Nice to know that I'm not the only black sheep in the family," he'd remarkedthe day he drove her to the FBI Academy.
Now the silvery-haired man with glasses was speaking, and he was askingher whether she was familiar with a Special Agent Mulder. At hearingthe name, her eyebrows shot up. Was THAT what this was all about?
"Yes, I am," she replied.
That seemed to surprise them. "How so?" asked the silvery-hairedman.
"By reputation. Agent Mulder's an Oxford-educated psychologistwho wrote a monograph on serial killers and the occult, that helped catchMonte Propps in 1988. Generally thought of as the best analyst inthe Violent Crimes Section." She hesitated for a moment, then addedAgent Mulder's Academy nickname: Spooky Mulder.
That seemed to upset the man smoking the cigarette. No, not upset,exactly....but it did bother him, seemed to make him uncomfortable. She wondered if the man could be Agent Mulder's patron, and hoped thatshe hadn't stepped on the toes of someone important.
Now Blevins was talking again. "What I'll also tell you is thatAgent Mulder has developed a consuming devotion to an unassigned projectoutside the Bureau mainstream. Are you familiar with the so-called'X-Files'?"
So that WAS what the meeting was about. Scully felt conflictingemotions. She liked her current assignment; it was comfortable, familiar. She felt that she was doing valuable work, and that she was contributingsomething important to her country.
At the same time, she liked a challenge, and the X-Files were certainlythat. She didn't really know very much about them, but she had heardrumors....
"I believe they have to do with unexplained phenomena," she said.
"More or less," Blevins replied. "The reason you're here, AgentScully, is that we want you to assist Mulder on these 'X-Files'. You will write field reports on your activities, along with your observationson the validity of the work."
The cigarette smoking man had turned away from her; at Blevins wordshe now turned and gazed at her again, over his shoulder. Her eyesflicked at him briefly; the sense of unease she was getting fromthis man was almost palpable, and it was distracting her.
There was also something she didn't much care for in Blevins' tone. She considered herself first and foremost to be a scientist, but if shewas reading the Section Chief's tone and body language correctly, he wasasking her to surrender her objectivity, and that was something she wasn'twilling to do for ANYONE. Still, she had to be cautious; Blevinswas a powerful man, and he could wreak havoc with her career if she gavehim cause to do so.
Choosing her words carefully, she asked, "Am I to understand that youwant me to debunk the X-Files Project, sir?"
"Agent Scully, we trust you'll make the proper scientific analysis,"Blevins said blandly. And then the interview wound down.
Scully quietly seethed at herself as she rode the elevator down to thebasement. She'd been such an idiot. The interview had gonefairly well, until Blevins came to the part about her role in the matter. Wittingly or unwittingly, he had stepped on something very precious toher: Her devotion to science and objectivity. That had beenbad enough, but then she had had the poor judgment to challenge him onit. Oh, no one could fault the words she had used, just as therewas nothing in the words Blevins had used that anyone could point to byway of criticism. But she could tell from his eyes that he had notbeen pleased by her response.
The elevator doors opened. Taking a deep breath, she stepped outinto the basement hallway. The walls were lined with shelving, andthere seemed to be boxes everywhere -- excess files, she supposed, materialswhich wouldn't fit in their proper location, but which someone felt weretoo important to be thrown away.
She walked rapidly down the corridor, and stopped in front of the doorat the end of the hallway. There was no nameplate, no marking ofany kind, but unless she was completely turned around, this had to be theoffice she was looking for. She rapped lightly on the door.
A voice floated out to her, faintly sarcastic, but with a hint of...somethingelse, too. "Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted."
She took that as an invitation to enter, and pushed the door open andstepped across the threshold. She paused for a moment, and let hergaze drift across the room. The place was incredibly cluttered, withfiles, papers and assorted knick-knacks piled three and four deep on everyavailable flat surface. The walls were covered with photographs,newspaper clippings, and who-knew-what, and on one wall was a large posterwith a picture of a U.F.O. on it and a caption reading, "I want to believe".
A woman was seated at the room's only desk, her back to the door. She was bent over a light board, examining a set of slides. Evenfrom the back, Scully could see that the woman was beautiful. Scullyspotted a nameplate sitting on the desk: Special Agent Samantha Mulder. So she was in the right place; this was her new partner.
Stepping forward and extending her hand, she said, "Agent Mulder? I'm Dana Scully. I've been assigned to work with you...."
Fini